“In summary, the issues that face our peninsular are as follows:

The demand of a pound a year for a miner’s license, thus overburdening what few silver miners remain.

The refusal to recognize settling in the west, thus leaving settlers vulnerable to the depredations of Woose and Wyverns.

The excessive taxation, thus slowing trade and impoverishing Trackford.

The fact that Carfane has only five seats in parliament and no peers, in spite of being a full eight of the Commonwealth’s population.

And finally, the brutal occupation of Trackford and the killing of its citizens in the street after its lawful protests against the outrageous taxes imposed upon it.”

Mato Calwere, First blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of tyrants

Hans Draiger, 15 September 1582 AAA. Cathlain Pass.

“Caught rabbits” Hans called as he approached the campsite Uln had prepared.

Uln grinned. “Just as I got the fire started.”

“How convenient.”

Taking them hadn’t been hard. He’d just stunned them with tendrils and then speared them with his half-pike. He barely even had to track them. Rabbits were everywhere, and his third eye meant even their size and the long grass sticking out through the snow couldn’t hide them.

Hans threw the rabbits, already gutted, down, staked his half-pike down with it’s butt spike, unslung his musket, and sat down next to Uln, wrapped under her cloak. They’d set up camp in an overhang in the Cathlain pass, the best and safest route through the mountains to reach Kasilisk. He pulled out his knife and got to work preparing them.

Uln pointed out a couple of circling wyverns silhouetted against the dusk sky. One of them was trailing a glider travois.

“They’re wheeling in.”

Hans absent mindedly felt for his musket. People who took a shoot on sight stance towards wyverns were bloodthirsty idiots, but it never hurt to be careful. “Reckon they’re hostile?” he asked, half to himself and half to Uln.

Uln shrugged. “If they were on the warpath they wouldn’t have a glider in tow.”

“Aye.” Hans agreed.

He saw one of the wyverns flying straight towards them, the other, the one with the travois, moving to put down.

He stood up and waved as it-he, he realized, seeing the markings on his snouts-came in, wings spreading to brake. Hans blinked his eyes shut, seeing the aether pulsing and eddying around the wyvern’s soul like a witch warping gravity. He’d heard that was the only way something that big could fly. The wyverns who didn’t think that was ridiculous thought it was a sign of the cursed nature of groundwalkers, that only a few of them could do something all wyverns could.

He should really should learn how to do that himself, he thought.

The wyvern slammed to the ground a dozen yards away from him, landing hind legs first then planting the forelegs.

Hans stepped closer, squinting to see if he could recognize him. Wyvern faces were less distinctive than humans, but they could be identified if you knew what to look for.

Hans saw the scar running down the side of his face. Scar, then. Wyverns weren’t always imaginative when picking human names. Scar had gotten his in the fighting against the remnants of the Stone Hill clan after Halidon’s Hill. Wyvern males weren’t normally warriors, but there were a few, and Scar had been amongst them.

That would mean the other one was Rye.

“Hey, Scar!” Hans yelled. The wyvern stared at him for a moment, trying to recognize him. “Clesane?” Scar croaked. He clicked in annoyance as he realized his mistake. “Hans?”

“Yeah, that’s the one” Hans said, laughing.

“And Uln” Scar added, bobbing his snout at Uln. She’d come up from the fire and was walking over to them.

“Uln, yeah” she agreed. Hans turned back towards the fire. “Rye need help with the travois?”

“I’ll do it” Scar said.

Hans nodded. He felt the chill of the air in the high pass, even under his coats. “Should get back to the fire. Uln won’t be pleased if I freeze to death.”

Scar made a noise that could have been a chuckle. Hans walked back to the fire as Scar bounded over to check on Rye. It took the two of them a fair bit of work to get the glider, an expensive bit of rig often built by human contractors and maintained by Woose hands, dragged into the natural windbreak they’d built the fire in and anchored. The wyverns walked over to the fire.

Scar was the smaller of the two, Rye’s bond-mate or partner, or basically, husband. Hans had never been able to figure out the point of marrying two males, but then again his own marriage wasn’t exactly conventional either.

“Hauling food?” Hans asked, glancing at the travois.

Rye clicked in agreement. “That and powder, and lead. Everyone wants more fire and they’re perfectly willing to give us all the pelts and feathers they have for it.”

He remembered those scalps, hanging from the fort, and Utram’s story, and the massacres, and rumours of worse he’d heard. It was war out in the west, and the Woose were losing.

“And you?” Scar asked.

“Heading out to Kasilisk after getting run out of Foothold.” Hans said.

“You hear about the dead wyverns? We found them and told West Point. Some locals didn’t like it. Went after us. Had to get out.” Uln explained.

Rye clicked. “I’ve heard about the killings. Nasty.”

“Aye.” Hans said.

He picked up his knife and continued working on the rabbits as they spoke.

“Kasilisk? Something to do with that peninsular diet they’re holding?” Rye asked.

“Yeah” Hans said. “Eidre, my landlady, she wants to push the Republic of Three Species. Wants me to help her, and I’m willing to do it if it gets the killers brought down faster.”

Scar made a noise that could have been a laugh. “That plan’s ridiculous. The warriors will never consent, because they’re bloody warriors. The Commonwealth won’t go for it because that’ll stop them taking the Carfani’s shiny pebbles. The Carfani won’t go for it because it’ll stop them taking over the whole peninsular and finding more shiny pebbles(1).”

“It’s my people’s only chance, though.” Uln said, leaning forwards. “There are more humans than there are Woose. Far more. And they’re pushing west. The Commonwealth can’t hold them back, the wyverns can’t hold them back, we can’t hold them back. At least if we can become part of Carfane, we can survive. I’m not getting my hopes up, though.”

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” Rye said. “What my father always said.”

“Aye, that’s all we can do. That’s all anyone can do, really.” Hans said.

“You two got food?” he added.

Scar nodded. “Took a couple of rabbits before we put down.”

“Bloody things are everywhere. Good eating, though” Hans said.

“Gets boring after a while.” Uln said.

“Could be worse. Could be more bloody feral sheep.” Scar said. Hans laughed in agreement. They’d killed more than their fair share of the things, and they were steadily eating out the native Carfani behemoths, reapers and tarandrus.

He woke to clear skies, revealing the white teeth of the Hendiot mountain range that split the peninsular in half around them. Snow had fallen overnight, in clumps on the ground that still let green grass poke show through.

Summer is coming.

Hans disentangled himself from Uln, careful not to wake her, and pulled on his breeches and coat.

Uln was still asleep, her red hair falling over her craggy face. Hans watched her sleep for a moment. People thought Woose ugly, and some were, but so were plenty of humans. Uln was, if not beautiful, then attractive in a rugged way.

He forced himself to focus. He needed to take the opportunity to get a message to Glaive, and Scar and Rye seemed willing to run it. He found them curled together under another overhang, next to a vitriol-lit fire that had burnt itself out overnight.

Scar’s head bobbed up as he saw Hans coming. Wyverns had the rather uncanny ability to sleep with one eye open.

“You going to West Point anytime soon?” Hans asked.

“Possibly” Scar said, as cautiously as a flying reptile imitating a human voice could.

Hans knew how this sort of thing worked.

“Right, I’m going into Kasilisk, so if you have any favours you want…”

Scar clicked. “You helped fix the travois that one time, so I owe you.”

Hans realized he’d accidently put Scar in his debt. The wyvern economy, such as it was, relied almost entirely on barter and favours given and received. Gifts given “freely” often came with expectation of reciprocation.

“Well, I have a message for Glaive.”

“Who?” Rye asked. The second wyvern had woken up by now, and was getting to his feet.

“She’s one of Captain’s skein leaders. Used to be her wingwoman.”

The names wyverns had in their own languages, and the ones they took or where given in groundwalker languages were almost always completely different, and it had plenty of potential for confusion.

“I know the one. What’s the message?” Scar said.

“Tell her that I’m heading to Kasilisk to try and get the killers thrown under the cart, and that they were aligned with the Patriot’s Brigade, but Eidre-my landlady-she’s going to try and set the rest of the republicans on them. And tell her not to go burning everything down just yet.”

He decided not to mention Traharn’s name. The evidence was only circumstantial, and he didn’t want to give Glaive any ideas.

“She’s a warrior. I’ll need good luck with that.”

“They’re not all lunatics.” Rye said.

“Most of them are.” Scar answered.

“Anyway, thankyou.” Hans said.

“I owe you.” Scar said.

“Not anymore, once you’ve run the message.” Hans said.

Scar clicked. “Just so.”

*

Eidre caught up to them a day later, on the northern side of the pass. She was out on horseback, in a buff coat thrown over her riding dress, with pair of mounted servants riding with her, all of them armed with fowling pieces and rapiers.

Hans waved them down as they came down the mud choked roads.

“Enjoying the journey?” Eidre asked, smiling slightly, looking down on him from horseback.

Hans snorted. “It’s travelling in winter. It’s never going to be pleasant. Where’s the others?”

“Lorne back home. Aled and the other servants are with the coach. It got stuck, Aled insisted on bringing the thing, he can get himself dirty trying to clear it while it while I go hunting.”

Hans laughed. “Wyverns have the right idea for travelling in winter. Just bloody fly.”

“That’s what the Teresians found out, back at Halidon’s Hill. Don’t know what they were thinking, trying to fight in winter. It’s hard enough riding, without trying to move a whole damn army getting harried by wyverns and airships the whole way.” Eidre said.

“Bunch of idiots. I bet they ignored the people who’d actually seen a southern winter.” Hans said.

Refighting the 67’ might as well be the Carfani national pastime for both humans and wyverns, and his Aunt Cassana had fought as a Grey Witch in that campaign.

Everyone knew the story- The Teresians land an army in Carfane, aimed They’d underestimated Carfane, though-underestimated the winter, underestimated the wyverns, and most of all in the usual telling, underestimated the fighting spirit of the Carfani militia, and had been turned back at Halidon’s Hill, saving Carfane from Teresian absolutism.

The wyverns told much the same story, though of course it was the wyverns who won the campaign with a little help from the groundwalkers. Unlike the Carfani, they -or Scar, at least- didn’t leave out the fact that the fighting in the peninsular had carried on for two years as Commonwealth regulars and wyvern auxiliaries dug out the Teresian colonies in the northwest of the peninsular root and stem.

“What happened happened, and thank the Mother that it burned out the way it did.” Eidre said quietly.

“Amen to that” Hans said in agreement.

“Now, I have dinner to kill” Eidre said, hefting her shotgun.

“You won’t catch much more than rabbit.” Hans said.

Eidre shrugged. “It’s still food.”

“Not even that. I’ve heard of people who live on nothing but rabbits starving to death. Anyway, I met Scar and Rye on the way up here, wyvern traders. They’re sending a message to Glaive that we might be able to work with the Diet to get the killers arrested.”

“Good. If the wyverns take that as a sign that we aren’t all a bunch of land-grabbers coming for them once we’re done with the woose, then we'll have taken the moral high ground over the commonwealth and undercut their air power.” Eidre said and rode off, servants in tow.